Organizational Commitment and Its Dimensions in Nurses working in Arak's Hospitals

Human capital is the most critical strategic element and most basic way to improve the performance and efficiency of the organization. Human resources committed and loyal to the goals and values of the organization is not only considered as a factor positively affecting the organizational excellence, but also a sustainable competitive advantage for many organizations. Considering the importance of human resources, it is obvious that human resources, in addition to having skills and expertise, should have high sense of belonging and commitment so that health system goals are achieved. Organizational commitment is among constructs that affects the behavior of employees in organizations. It also affects many organizational variables such as employee relocation intention, clinical practice, organizational behavior, absenteeism rate as well as job conflict and stress. Components such as attaching importance to organizational goals and values, a sense of belonging and loyalty to the organization, replication and identification with the organization and the desire to stay in the organization are the core of the organizational commitment construct. According to the desirable results of employee's organizational commitment, organizational commitment has special place in many studies and attitudes and its different aspects have been taken into consideration. This study aimed to determine the organizational commitment of nurses working in hospitals of Arak city in 2016.
In this descriptive-analytical study, 176 nurses were enrolled in the study using simple random sampling. The main inclusion criterion was having a university degree in nursing. To collect data, Allen and Meyer's Organizational Commitment Questionnaire was used. The questions included 24 questions in three dimensions (affective, intellectual and normative commitment). Each dimension consisted of 8 questions that measure the organizational commitment based on 5-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree on one end to Strongly Agree on the other. The scores obtained from this questionnaire ranged from 0 to 100, and the best score of this instrument is 100. A demographic questionnaire relates to the characteristics of the subjects, which consists of questions related to gender, age, marital status, education, employment history and employment status. The reliability of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) in three subscales of affective, continuance, normative commitment was confirmed by Abbaszadeh in his PhD thesis in 2011 with Cronbach's alpha of 85%, 79% and 77%, respectively. The reliability of questions was evaluated and confirmed in a sample size of 20 and Cronbach's alpha equal to 86%. To ensure the validity of the questionnaire, which were used by various researchers (including Bahrami, 2011, Abbaszadeh, 2012), the researcher used the opinion of 10 professors of the field. The process collecting data from all hospitals lasted for 15 days. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical tests in using SPSS v.16.
Ethical considerations: Participant's oral consent to participate in the research was obtained and they were assured about the anonymity of the questionnaires about the confidentiality of their information.
Findings: The average age of participants and their age range was 28 years and 20-50 years, respectively. Female and male participants accounted for 88.3% and 11.7% of the subjects, respectively. The average overall organizational commitment score was estimated 77.77%.
Among organizational commitment dimensions, affective commitment has higher average (6.30±26.77) and continuance commitment (with an average of 2.79 ±25.80) and normative commitment (with an average of 4.51± 25.19) were at a moderate level. Of the total subjects of study, 2.3%, 25.6%, 68.1% and 4% of the participants obtained too low, low, high and very high commitment score, respectively. Fisher's exact test showed that there was a significant positive correlation between organizational commitment and type of employment and work experience (p 0/05).
Discussion and Considering average-to-above organizational commitment of nurses and their higher affective commitment than the other dimensions of organizational commitment, the findings provide valuable guidance to researchers and managers to effectively increase the organizational commitment of nursing staffs and ultimately increase their organizational attachment and to improve the quality of services provided to patients. Affective commitment represents employee's affective bond, their identification with the values and goals of the organization and the extent of their involvement with the organization. Therefore, employees who have strong affective commitment maintain their membership in the organization and continue to work in the organization. On the other hand, the normative commitment implies a sense of faith and commitment to stay in the organization and individuals who have this kind of commitment, believe that they should continue working in the organization. They also feel obliged to stay in the organization. Therefore, strengthening the normative dimension can prevent the turnover of nurses in the workplace. Continuance commitment also reflects the costs of leaving the organization compared to the interests of staying in it and the individual who has continuance commitment will likely leave the organization and join new organization by comparing investments and income obtained from new business. Holding in-service training sessions, division of labor based on merit and competency, continuous performance assessment and focusing on the abilities and talents of nurses usually have a role in enhancing the normative commitment. So, given the above-to-average organizational commitment of nurses, it is essential to identify the factors hindering the improvement of organizational commitment of nurses to an excellent level and senior managers adopt mechanisms to strengthen and improve their organizational commitment.